Back pain is among the most common conditions for which patients seek medical care. More than 70 percent of adults suffer back pain or neck pain at some time in their lives. In the United States, medical treatment of back pain is estimated to cost $25 billion dollars annually. Workers compensation costs and time lost from work add another $25 billion.
Medical management is the first treatment choice. If there is no improvement in the patient's condition, surgery is often the next treatment of choice. Despite the uncertainty about how effective surgery is for patients, the number of fusion surgeries rose 127% from 1997 to 2004, to more than 303,000. Recent research demonstrates that even after two years patients treated conservatively are as well off as those treated surgically. Surgical costs are continuing to rise, as patients receive ever more aggressive treatments.
Recently, vertebral axial decompression therapy for the spine and discs has emerged as a frontline treatment for back pain. This is a non-surgical treatment for herniated discs, degenerative disc disease, posterior facet syndrome and failed back surgery. With traditional traction therapy, forces are applied in a linear fashion and the resultant muscle guarding prevents the discs from being decompressed. Paraspinal muscles are conditioned to oppose abrupt and linear changes in tension, but will relax if the force is applied in a smooth gradual manner whereby the rate is slowed progressively according to a logarithmic time scale.
It has been shown that tension forces to the spine applied in a ‘logarithmic’ time/force curve will decompress the discs and spine. Vertebral axial decompression is the only treatment that has been shown in clinical study to decrease the intervertebral disc pressure to negative levels and to decompress the lateral nerve roots that supply the legs.
While this known vertebral axial decompression therapy is advantageous, an improved vertebral decompression therapy would be desirable.